Are the Great Lakes an endangered species?

An impressive series in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel concludes that the once-steady water flow in the Great Lakes has been “altered by dredging, dams and now warming temperatures.”As a result, the increased evaporation could bring volatility to the lakes' highly populated shores.Part 1 of the series, which ran Sunday, looks at whether Lake Michigan's record-low levels mark the beginning of a new era for the Great Lakes. It includes a photo gallery, three videos and a cool “motion graphic” on water evaporation.That should keep you plenty busy until Part 2 comes out on Wednesday.

There are some eye-popping numbers in this Bloomberg story about health care cost containment — in India.By trimming costs with measures such as buying cheaper scrubs and spurning air-conditioning, Bloomberg notes, heart surgeon Devi Shetty “has cut the price of artery-clearing coronary bypass surgery to 95,000 rupees ($1,583), half of what it was 20 years ago, and wants to get the price down to $800 within a decade.”If that sounds incredibly low, it is, by U.S. standards. The story notes that the same procedure costs $106,385 at the Cleveland Clinic, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.“It shows that costs can be substantially contained,” says Srinath Reddy, president of the Geneva-based World Heart Federation, of Dr. Shetty's approach. “It's possible to deliver very high quality cardiac care at a relatively low cost.”

The story notes that medical experts such as Mr. Reddy “are watching closely, eager to see if Shetty's driven cost-cutting can point the way for hospitals to boost revenue on a wider scale by making life-saving heart operations more accessible to potentially millions of people in India and other developing countries.”

The Washington Post is excerpting ”Collision 2012,”, a new book by Don Balz, one of its star political writers, and this installment shines a light on how the Obama campaign won the race for voter data nationwide and in Ohio.Aaron Pickrell, Obama's chief Ohio strategist, offers a story about himself “that illustrated the disparity between the two campaigns' ground operations,” Mr. Balz writes.Here's a quick version of the tale:An Obama volunteer knocked on his door during the summer, just to check in and see if he had any questions. The volunteer did not know who Pickrell was. He knew, based on campaign data, only that Pickrell should be a solid Obama voter, someone who needed to be contacted once at most.Pickrell and his wife later ordered absentee ballots. When the ballots arrived, they set them aside on the kitchen table, where they sat for two weeks. “I got thrown back into the database of people who needed to be contacted,” he said. Soon an Obama volunteer knocked on their door to remind them to turn in the ballots. Once they did, there was no more contact. That was the level of the campaign's efficiency. Meanwhile, Pickrell said he received a dozen direct-mail pieces from the Romney campaign, a waste of money and effort on the Republicans' part. He got no direct mail from the Obama campaign because the database said he didn't need persuading. Rich Beeson, Romney's political director, eventually learned the scope and sophistication of the Obama operation. “They took that to another level,” he said.

The American Conservative offers up a fanciful proposal called “The Cleveland Plan” to jump-start ailing economies.

The magazine builds off a recent New York Times story indicating that the industrial Midwest and South “are home to metro areas with the least income mobility — this economic geography matters.”One thing that could unite Democrats and Republicans and begin to address the problem?“Let's move strategically unimportant federal departments and agencies to economically impoverished cities and towns across America,” the magazine says. Republicans would support it because, well, they hate DC and favor “real” America. Democrats would support it because their cities and states would benefit disproportionately (think Atlanta, Michigan, or Illinois).Call it the Cleveland Plan after the city that exemplifies America's decline. Not only does Cleveland routinely rank as one of America's fastest-dying cities, but Clevelanders also had the indignity of watching the man who spurned them turn around and win the 2012 (and 2013) NBA Finals (not to mention they still claim Dennis Kucinich as a favorite son). Plop the Department of Energy HQ in Public Square and you suddenly have thousands of jobs that aren't going anywhere.”

House Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci of Wadsworth, “are using the final few days of floor time before a five-week recess for a 10-bill attack on waste, the Internal Revenue Service and the Obama administration,” according to this story from Bloomberg.The legislative flurry “is intended to keep the IRS in the spotlight while Congress investigates the tax agency's scrutiny of Tea Party groups,” the news service says. “The broadest measures have little chance of being enacted and instead are giving party members a chance to stake out positions on shrinking the size of government.”The bill from Rep. Renacci “would add politically motivated enforcement to the list of so-called 'deadly sins' that can lead directly to an IRS employee's firing,” Bloomberg reports.During a Ways and Means hearing last month, Danny Werfel, the interim IRS leader, told Rep. Renacci that adding political targeting to the list would be a “reasonable suggestion.”You also can follow me on Twitter for more news about business and Northeast Ohio.

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